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      ‘Slime Language 2,’ by Young Thug and Friends, Reaches No. 1

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      The compilation featuring the Atlanta rapper and various artists from his Young Stoner Life label bested Taylor Swift for the top spot on Billboard’s album chart.Mixtape, playlist or compilation album — what’s the difference?These days, on streaming services, not much. But whatever you call it, “Slime Language 2,” the new project from the Atlanta rapper Young Thug’s Young Stoner Life label, is No. 1 on the album chart.“Slime Language 2” topped the latest edition of the Billboard 200 with the equivalent of 113,000 sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total was largely dependent on streams — 143 million of them — while sales of the full album topped out at 6,000 copies.Credited to Young Thug and various artists — many from under Thug’s YSL umbrella — “Slime Language 2” features 23 songs from a mix-and-match collection of Atlanta rappers like Lil Baby, Gunna, Lil Keed, Lil Duke and Unfoonk, plus less local guests like Drake, Big Sean and Lil Uzi Vert. (A week after the album’s release, a deluxe version of the album added eight more tracks for a total of 31.)First-week streams for “Slime Language 2” — the sequel to a compilation released in 2018 — matched Taylor Swift’s total the week before, for her rerecorded version of “Fearless,” which also hit No. 1 with the year’s biggest numbers to date. This week, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” fell to No. 2 with 57,000 in equivalent sales, down 80 percent.The rest of the Top 5 includes the semi-sidelined country singer Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” at No. 3; “Justice” by Justin Bieber, at No. 4; and, in its chart debut, “Heart” by Eric Church, at No. 5. More

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      Shock G, Frontman for Hip-Hop Group Digital Underground, Dies at 57

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      The group had a string of hits in the 1990s, including “The Humpty Dance,” and helped introduce a little-known rapper named Tupac Shakur.Gregory Edward Jacobs, known as Shock G, the frontman for the influential hip-hop group Digital Underground, was found dead on Thursday at a hotel in Tampa, Fla. He was 57.His death was confirmed by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, which did not provide a cause .Digital Underground had a string of hits in the early 1990s and introduced its audience to a little-known rapper named Tupac Shakur. The group’s name sounded like “a band of outlaws from a cyberpunk novel,” with a sound that “straddles the line between reality and fantasy, between silliness and social commentary,” The New York Times wrote in 1991. “Digital Underground is where Parliament left off,” Shock G said at the time, referring to the groundbreaking George Clinton band.Shock G had been shuttling from his home in Tampa to Northern California in 1987 when the group made a self-released single, “Underwater Rimes.” That helped get the attention of Tommy Boy Records, which released Digital Underground’s first album, “Sex Packets.” It sold a million copies and featured the hit single “The Humpty Dance.”The album stood out for melding funk and jazz riffs on top of catchy drumbeats. And with Shock G’s lanky frame and toothy grin, the group had a visual aesthetic ripe for the dawn of the music video generation. Shock G, who produced music in addition to rapping, was known for spinning different personas, depending on his surroundings. In the video for “The Humpty Dance,” Shock G took on the persona of Humpty Hump, the title character, donning a pair of dark-rimmed glasses with an obviously fake nose, a fur hat and tie. “I’m sick wit dis, straight gangsta mack / But sometimes I get ridiculous,” he raps on the song. “I’ll eat up all your crackers and your licorice / Hey yo fat girl, come here — are ya ticklish?” Part of the hook for the song: “Do the Humpty Hump, come on and do the Humpty Hump.”Shock G can be seen in a similar outfit, both goofy and suave, in the video for the group’s song, “Doowutchyalike,” where he encouraged listeners to let loose and enjoy themselves as a saxophone gently riffs over the beat.Shock G’s most lasting impact on hip-hop and music may have come when the group released the hit “Same Song,” which was Mr. Shakur’s “first vocal appearance on a song,” according to Genius.com. Shock G, who appears first on the song, once again cast himself as the good-time host. “I came for the party to get naughty, get my rocks on / Eat popcorn, watch you move your body to the pop song.”When it was Mr. Shakur’s turn, he quickly unleashed a thoughtful verse about the dangers of success: “Get some fame, people change.”Mr. Shakur had auditioned for Shock G and was hired to be a member of the group’s road crew. He eventually performed and recorded with Digital Underground, appearing on the group’s “This Is an EP Release” (Tommy Boy), and “Sons of the P” (Tommy Boy), which was nominated for a Grammy Award.In 1991, Mr. Shakur started a solo recording career with the album “2Pacalypse Now” (Interscope), which sold half a million copies. It included two modest hits, “Trapped” and “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” a song about an unwed teenage mother’s plight. Before the album was released, he also started a career as a movie actor, playing the violent, unpredictable Bishop in the Ernest Dickerson film “Juice.”By 1993, Mr. Shakur was a rising star. Shock G and another Digital Underground member, Money B, appeared on Mr. Shakur’s album, helping create his first major hit, “I Get Around,” a poolside anthem with scantily clad women and a laid-back beat. But now, it was Shock G, sporting an Afro and oversized purple T-shirt, with the message: “Now you can tell from my everyday fits I ain’t rich / So cease and desist with them tricks / I’m just another Black man caught up in the mix / Tryna make a dollar out of 15 cents.”Shock G’s musical instincts were forged by a childhood spent moving around the country. His mother worked as a television producer and his father worked as an executive in computer management. After the couple divorced, “I spent my biggest chunk of time in Tampa but I also lived in New York, Philly and California,” Shock G had told The Times. “I have always been into music and played in bands starting when I was 10 or 11.”His grandmother, Gloria Ali, was a pianist and cabaret singer in Harlem in the 1950s. She taught him how to play “Round Midnight” on the piano. Then, as hip-hop began to gain traction in New York in the late 1970s, Shock G, who was living there at the time, recalled, “All of my friends and I sold our instruments to buy mixers and turntables.”Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Shock G saw music as expansive, inclusive and experimental. “Funk can be rock, funk can be jazz and funk can be soul,” he told The Times. “Most people have a checklist of what makes a good pop song: it has to be three minutes long, it must have a repeatable chorus and it must have a catchy hook. That’s what makes music stale. We say ‘Do what feels good.’ If you like it for three minutes, then you’ll love it for 30.”Christina Morales More

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      Verzuz Is One of the Least Toxic Places Online. Here’s Why.

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      A musical battle, the hit webcast suggests, is really just a pretext for a party and an occasion to appreciate something.Steve Harvey, the comedian and game-show host, is not prone to understatement, least of all when it comes to bespoke men’s wear. This past Easter Sunday, he appeared on a studio stage wearing a custom satin suit in a violet hue previously unknown to science. Harvey was there to host an episode of the popular webcast Verzuz, a musical competition in which famous artists face off to determine who has the better catalog. The episode was a big one, a showdown of soul legends pitting the Isley Brothers against Earth, Wind & Fire, and Harvey’s words were as loud as his suit: This would be, he announced, “the most epic Verzuz of all time.”Onstage, Ron and Ernie Isley sat facing their counterparts, Earth, Wind & Fire’s Philip Bailey, Verdine White and Ralph Johnson. It was indeed an unusual matchup. Verzuz battles typically feature artists — rappers, R&B singers, influential producers — who have made their name in the past few decades. But Earth, Wind & Fire’s debut album arrived in stores 50 years ago; the Isley Brothers’ first hit, “Shout,” was released in 1959, when Steve Harvey was a toddler. Now 64, he faced the camera to address younger music fans. “Ask your mama about this here music,” he said. “If you don’t know their music, it’s ’cause you don’t know nothing about music. So sit down and learn.”Pop music has always gone hand in hand with strong opinions and heated debates — including the kinds of generational cleavages that inspire finger-wagging lectures. There are times when fans stake personal identities on their favorite records or genres, or sustain fierce debates over rival artists: Beatles or Stones, Michael Jackson or Prince, Nicki or Cardi. Arguing about music may well be as primal a human endeavor as making it. Verzuz is based on this principle. The title evokes a heavyweight bout, and the episodes unfold like a boxing match: Each round presents a track from each artist, with viewers encouraged to pick the victor on a song-by-song basis.The format has links to feisty musical blood sports: jazz’s cutting contests, Jamaican sound clashes, rap battles. But Verzuz has emerged as the warmest and fuzziest musical phenomenon of the past year, one of the internet’s most reliable suppliers of good vibes. Verzuz began on Instagram Live during the early weeks of the pandemic, with a battle between its co-founders, the hip-hop producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz. That first webcast, which stretched for five hours, was a novelty: an odd combination of a Zoom conference call, a D.J. set and a languid late-night hang. Timbaland played one of his hits (Aaliyah’s “One in a Million”), Swizz Beatz answered with one of his (DMX’s “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem”). The scrolling comments filled with emojis and exclamations (“Timbo range too much for swizz”). The interface was wonky and the sound muddy, but the spectacle — musicians glimpsed through laptop cameras, grooving to their own records — was strange and thrilling, a more intimate encounter than showbiz normally permits. In a world that had ground to a halt, the two producers had hit upon a whole new way to stage a concert.Today, pop fandom marinates in online swamps similar to those that breed conspiracy theories and political extremism, with almost comically toxic results.A year later, Verzuz is somewhat spiffed up. It was recently acquired by TrillerNet, the parent company to a TikTok competitor, and has a sponsorship deal with Cîroc vodka and a partnership with Peloton. Competitors no longer stream in from remote locations on jittery Wi-Fi. But the show retains a gonzo charm, and a sense that unscripted weirdness may erupt at any moment. A battle between the dance-hall titans Beenie Man and Bounty Killer, livestreamed from Jamaica, was interrupted by the local police. (“There are 500,000 people watching us right now from all over the world,” Beenie Man told them. “Do you want to be that guy?”) The R&B star Ashanti was forced to stall when her adversary, Keyshia Cole, ran an hour late. The Wu-Tang Clan rappers Ghostface Killah and Raekwon finished off their battle singing and dancing to old disco hits.This shagginess extends to the competition itself. There’s no formal means of determining a Verzuz winner; victory is in the ear of the beholder. Viewers weigh in on social media, and journalists write recaps. But their judgments are, of course, subjective, maybe even beside the point. A musical battle, Verzuz suggests, is really a pretext for a party and an occasion for art appreciation. This has always been true: From the primeval pop hothouse of Tin Pan Alley, where songwriters vied to churn out hits, to today’s pop charts, dominated by hip-hop producers chasing novel sounds, one-upsmanship is often the motor of innovation, an engine of both musical art and commerce. Great songs, beloved albums, groundbreaking styles — all have resulted from musicians’ drive to outshine their colleagues.Competition is also a driving force in music fandom — for better or, often these days, for worse. Today, pop fandom marinates in online swamps similar to those that breed conspiracy theories and political extremism, with almost comically toxic results: Some super fans organize themselves into “armies” that devote disturbing amounts of energy to the coordinated harassment of anyone seen as speaking ill of their favorite stars.Arguing about music may well be as primal a human endeavor as making it.One of the subtler values of Verzuz is that it models a saner, more joyful, more pleasurable kind of musical advocacy and competition — in which trash is talked lovingly, both doled out and received in good humor. Here, too, there are politics of a different kind. Last summer, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, Verzuz held two “special editions”: a gospel episode titled “The Healing,” featuring the singers Kirk Franklin and Fred Hammond, and a Juneteenth celebration, with Alicia Keys and John Legend. Nearly every artist to appear on Verzuz is Black, and the show makes no concessions to any other audience; non-Black viewers enter its virtual spaces as eavesdroppers on an in-group conversation. The point of these battles is not to choose winners, but to luxuriate in the glories of the Black pop canon, and the community forged by that body of music. The critic Craig Jenkins, writing about a matchup between Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle, rendered a pithy verdict that could be applied to the whole Verzuz enterprise: “Blackness won.”That was true again on Easter Sunday. Despite Steve Harvey’s best efforts to stir up intergenerational beef, the webcast was a showcase of musical continuity across the decades. (In the unlikely event that there were viewers unfamiliar with Earth, Wind & Fire or the Isleys, they would surely have recognized many of the songs, which have been copiously sampled and interpolated by hip-hop artists.) The episode ended in the only way it could have: with members of both groups gathered at the front of the stage, dancing and singing along to Earth, Wind & Fire’s celestial anthem “September,” abandoning all pretense that they were adversaries in musical battle. “Celebrate! Love!” shouted Philip Bailey. “Enjoy! Appreciate!”Source photographs by Raymond Boyd/Getty Images; Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Getty Images; Michael Putland/Getty Images.Jody Rosen is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of “Two Wheels Good: The Bicycle on Planet Earth and Elsewhere,” to be published next year. He last wrote about the musical prodigy Jacob Collier. More

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      Black Rob, Rapper Known for His Hit Single ‘Whoa!,’ Dies at 52

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      A star for Bad Boy Records after the Notorious B.I.G.’s death, the rapper had a husky, seen-it-all voice even as a young man.Robert Ross, the rapper known as Black Rob, whose husky, seen-it-all voice powered turn-of-the-millennium hits like “Whoa!” and “Can I Live” for Bad Boy Records, died on Saturday at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He was 52.The cause was cardiac arrest, said Mark Curry, a friend and one-time Bad Boy artist, who added that Mr. Ross had numerous health issues in recent years, including diabetes, lupus, kidney failure and multiple strokes.Mr. Ross had been undergoing dialysis and was discharged from Piedmont Atlanta Hospital this month, Mr. Curry said. In a video that was posted online and spread across the hip-hop world, Mr. Ross detailed his ailments and recent struggles with homelessness.“He didn’t have a home, but he always had us,” said Mr. Curry, who called Mr. Ross “a true poet.” He added: “He’s known for telling stories and his music described his life. You can feel it.”Last week, Mr. Curry, along with the producer Mike Zombie, began promoting a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Mr. Ross — “to help him find a home, pay for medical help and stability during these trying times,” the campaign’s description said. The fund-raiser collected about half of its $50,000 goal.Mr. Ross, who was born in Harlem, N.Y., began rapping around the age of 11, influenced by local artists like Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, whom he credited for helping to develop his storytelling prowess. He also internalized the essence of his musically ascendant neighborhood, citing its “pick-me-up kinda sound.”“It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s got a little flavor, I could dance to this’ — you’re gonna talk about a little bit of money, a little bit of drugs,” Mr. Ross said in a 2013 interview. “We were the flashiest.”Best known for the hard-hitting 2000 single “Whoa!”, which reached No. 43 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a string of electric guest verses on songs by Mase, 112 and Total, Mr. Ross could sound both motivated and weathered even as a young man.Thrust into more of a leading role after the murder of his Bad Boy label mate, the Notorious B.I.G., in March 1997, the rapper became another fast-burning star under the imprimatur of the budding hip-hop mogul Sean Combs, better known as Diddy, by the end of the 1990s.Mr. Ross’s debut album, the fittingly named “Life Story,” was released by Bad Boy in 2000, when he was 31. Already, he had spent more than a decade of his life in and out of juvenile detention, jail and prison, and the music reflected that.“It’s hell,” the rapper said at the time of his past. “Once they get their teeth on you, they keep biting, until they feel like, ‘Let’s throw away the key on this cat.’”“Life Story” featured intricate street tales of stickups, shootouts and the family struggles that could lead to such things, and it reached No. 3 on the Billboard album chart, eventually becoming platinum.Five years later, “The Black Rob Report,” the rapper’s second album, failed to find the same success, in part because Mr. Ross was back in prison, having failed to report to sentencing for a 2004 larceny charge. His career never recovered.“Bad Boy left me for dead,” Mr. Ross said upon his release from prison in 2010. Two subsequent independent releases on different labels foundered.Mr. Ross is survived by his mother, Cynthia; four siblings; nine children; and five grandchildren.Many people on social media offered condolences for Mr. Ross, including Diddy, the entrepreneur Daymond John and the rappers Missy Elliott, L.L. Cool J, GZA and Styles P.On Twitter, L.L. Cool J described Mr. Ross as a storyteller, gentleman and an M.C.Ms. Elliott lamented that the death of Mr. Ross closely followed that of another New York rapper, Earl Simmons, known as DMX, who died this month.“It’s hard finding the words to say when someone passes away,” Ms. Elliott said on Twitter. “I am Praying for both of their families for healing.” More

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      When a TikTok Influencer Dances, Who Gets Credit?

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      Late last month, the TikTok influencer Addison Rae went on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and casually performed a suite of recent viral dance routines in a comedic skit. Critics reacted with cries of appropriation — the dances’ creators, many of them Black, were not credited — and with dismissals of Rae’s dancing ability.What the producers of the skit failed to acknowledge is how dance credits have become integral to TikTok, as they have been on apps where dance was previously popular, like Instagram and Dubsmash. Influencers like Rae and Charli D’Amelio might be the most well-known dancers on TikTok, but they are vessels for dances created by a range of others, from professional choreographers looking for a jolt of virality to teenagers working out new moves in their basement.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the ways dance has been central to the spread of TikTok, the relationship between Black choreographers and white influencers and a pocket history of dance credits on social media.GuestTaylor Lorenz, The New York Times technology reporter More

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      Phoebe Bridgers Reworks Paul McCartney, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Andra Day, London Grammar, José González and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Paul McCartney featuring Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Seize the Day’Don’t take Paul McCartney’s enduring gifts — natural melody, succinctly surprising lyrics, sly chord progressions, tidy arrangements — for granted. Other songwriters don’t. Lest anyone has, the 78-year-old Sir Paul enlisted younger admirers (Beck, St. Vincent, Blood Orange, Anderson .Paak, Josh Homme, Dominic Fike) to rework the songs from his 2020 solo-in-the-studio album, “McCartney III,” as the new “McCartney III Imagined.” Phoebe Bridgers took on “Seize the Day,” a manifesto of unironic good intentions: “I’m OK with a sunny day when the world deserves to be bright.” She brings her own spirit of hushed discovery to the song, keeping McCartney’s march tempo but toning down his electric guitars. She ends her version with church bells, like a blessing. JON PARELESLucy Dacus, ‘Hot & Heavy’Since joining forces as boygenius, two-thirds of the band, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, have released searing solo albums that took their already strong songwriting to the next level. Now, it appears to be Lucy Dacus’s turn. “Hot & Heavy” begins in a synthesized glow, for a moment seeming like it might be a continuation of the stark sound she conjured on the recently released “Thumbs.” But it doesn’t take long for “Hot & Heavy” to kick into a gallop, coming alive with chiming guitars and gleaming pop-rock flourishes that recall “Full Moon Fever”-era Tom Petty. “You used to be so sweet,” Dacus sings on this tale of stinging nostalgia, “Now you’re a firecracker on a crowded street.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFiona Apple, ‘Love More’Ten years ago, Sharon Van Etten released her first great album, “Epic,” an enduringly wrenching account of a troubled relationship’s dissolution. To commemorate its anniversary, an impressive and eclectic array of artists — Lucinda Williams, Courtney Barnett, Shamir — contributed to a covers collection called “Epic Ten.” The ultimate co-sign, though, comes from the indomitable Fiona Apple, who offers her own interpretation of the album’s beautiful closing track, “Love More.” Van Etten’s version was a sparsely poignant dirge, buoyed by gentle waves of harmonium chords. Apple, instead, anchors hers to an almost chant-like rhythm accompanied by playfully layered backing vocal runs — though her delivery of the song’s verses provides the smoldering intensity these lyrics call for. “Chained to the wall of our room,” goes the opening line. Leave it to Fiona to fetch the bolt cutters. ZOLADZAndra Day, ‘Phone Dies’“We can feel these vibes until my phone dies,” Andra Day offers, casually pitting the promise of romance against limited battery life. In Anderson .Paak’s blithe, tricky production, a frisky Brazilian beat carries Day’s multitracked vocals through a maze of chromatic chords that gives the illusion of climbing higher and higher, all the way to a sudden, giggly end. PARELESTirzah, ‘Send Me’It’s been three years since the London artist and Mica Levi collaborator Tirzah released her hypnotic debut album “Devotion,” but the new single “Send Me” transports the listener right back to that singularly chill head space. “Send Me” is built from simple materials — a repeated guitar lick, a hi-hat loop and Tirzah’s sultry, Sade-like vocals — but combined they somehow create a dense, enveloping atmosphere. “Let me heal and now I’m sure, now I’m sure,” Tirzah sings, her words seeming to turn to vapor on the exhales. It’s a whole vibe. ZOLADZSaweetie and Drakeo the Ruler, ‘Risky’It’s only April, but Saweetie is already wishing you a very pretty summer. Her new single “Risky” is at once effortless and exuberant, patiently waiting for whenever the weather permits you to roll the windows down. Drakeo the Ruler’s murmuring flow provides a perfect counterpoint to Saweetie’s bombast (“All this ice drippin’ on my body like a runny nose”), while a minimalist beat provides plenty of space for her personality to shine like a freshly painted ride. ZOLADZMick Jagger with Dave Grohl, ‘Eazy Sleazy’For Mick Jagger, quarantine fatigue has curdled into sarcastic exasperation. “Eazy Sleazy” is a late-pandemic rant, a stomping, mocking checklist of sloppy rhymes and coronavirus-year phenomena, from “Cancel all the tours/football’s fake applause” to “TikTok stupid dance” to “Way too much TV” to wacky conspiracy theories. Dave Grohl, an accomplished student of classic rock, reconstituted the full Rolling Stones sound behind Jagger’s rhythm guitar, and every few lines there’s a scream tossed into the mix. The chorus looks forward to a “freaky” reopening, when “It’ll only be a memory you’re trying to remember to forget”; this song will be a throwaway souvenir. PARELESLondon Grammar, ‘Lord It’s a Feeling’Hannah Reid, London Grammar’s singer, plays a not-so-impartial observer in “Lord It’s a Feeling.” She stacks up the misdeeds of a friend’s callous, cheating lover — “I saw the way you laughed behind her back” — before revealing, “I can admit that I have been right here myself.” A decorous string orchestra backs her at first, as she sings in her purest tones. But when her own stake becomes clear, a beat kicks in, her voice hardens and the observer becomes the accuser. PARELESJosé González, ‘Visions’It’s a small world. José González, born in Sweden to Argentine parents, carries on a British tradition of folky, meditative singer-songwriters. “Visions,” built from vocal harmonies and acoustic-guitar picking, takes an eternal perspective on “sentient beings” who should “look at the magic of reality/while accepting the honesty that we can’t know for sure what’s next.” Accompanied by his guitar drone, distant electronics and bird song, he notes, as a kind of mantra, “We are here together.” PARELESLea Bertucci, ‘An Arc of the Horizon’Place is central to the music of Lea Bertucci, a multi-instrumentalist and sound artist whose recordings often spring from questions about how physical environments express themselves through sound. But her work isn’t meant to just document the sonic qualities of a place; through a process of layering and abstraction, Bertucci gives us something closer to the residue of an experience or a vanished memory. On her new self-released album, “A Visible Length of Light,” ambient recordings she captured in New York, Rio de Janeiro, California and Nebraska haunt tracks featuring lightly droning organ, bass clarinet, wood flute and saxophone. It’s not clear where the sounds on “An Arc of the Horizon” were captured, but instead the music — spatial more than melodic — becomes an environment of its own. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOWadada Leo Smith, Douglas R. Ewart and Mike Reed, ‘Super Moon Rising’Rustle, resonance and attentive listening are the coins of the realm when the trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, the multi-reedist Douglas R. Ewart and the drummer Mike Reed come together. They’ve performed as a trio only rarely, but all three are improvisers and organizers with roots on the Chicago avant-garde and histories of involvement in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. “Super Moon Rising” is the centerpiece of their new album, “Sun Beans of Shimmering Light,” which connects to a long tradition of recordings by AACM-affiliated musicians that treat sparse and spacious free improvising as a style unto itself. RUSSONELLOSpirit of the Beehive, ‘Rapid & Complete Recovery’“Rapid & Complete Recovery” passes, briefly, as one of the milder, more approachable songs in Spirit of the Beehive’s catalog of dense, overloaded, compulsively morphing and often nerve-racking songs. It’s from the Philadelphia band’s new album, “Entertainment, Death,” and with its jazz-tinged opening bass vamp and acoustic-guitar syncopations it could pass for Laurel Canyon pop-folk — if not for its nagging high synthesizer tones, its cranked-up drums, its swerve into spoken words and the way instruments and vocals echo and melt at the end. “No limitations, you know what I’m after,” Zack Schwartz and Rivka Ravede calmly sing, perhaps as a partial explanation. PARELES More

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      Rod Wave and Lil Tjay, Two Brands of Sing-Rap With Different Bite

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      Rod Wave’s new album “SoulFly” extracts maximum melancholy, while Lil Tjay’s “Destined 2 Win” can’t find a firm grip.“Tombstone,” from the excellent new Rod Wave album “SoulFly,” is a startling soul hymn about unshoulderable weight. Wave, 21, is a tender singer deploying the cadences of a rapper, and on this song he finds a way to sing — about the burdens of fame and how they are simply high-priced replacements for the burdens that came before fame — with gospel-like invigoration and blues contemplation.Last week, just after “SoulFly,” Wave’s third album, debuted atop the Billboard album chart, Wave performed “Tombstone” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” Singing on a riverside porch, Wave gave off an air both baptismal and funereal:I keep my gun in my draws, ducking the sad newsMy phone say seven missed calls, I know it’s bad newsThis life had left me so scarred, I’m knowing that’s trueRemember times got so hard, I got it tattooedOne week after the release of “SoulFly” came the second album from the 19-year-old Lil Tjay, “Destined 2 Win,” which just debuted at No. 5. If Wave is the bluesman of this generation of sing-rappers, Tjay is the sweet crooner. Both traverse the same subject matter — more money, more problems; untrustworthy partners and the loyal ones who make up for it; skepticism about just how steady their perches are. But where Wave extracts maximum melancholy from these themes, Tjay’s approach is thinner and more brittle, rarely landing hard on a solid feeling.Wave is perhaps the pre-eminent hip-hop emoter of the last couple of years, and he chooses templates that allow his voice to ooze freely: guitar-led arrangements that recall schlocky 1980s radio rock, or elemental drum patterns. Many of the songs are short — a couple of choruses and a verse, sometimes just the verse. And Wave has a particular way of handling some of his line-ending syllables, breaking them into three descending steps, as if giving himself over to gravity.Mostly, he leans in to lamentation, like on “Gone Till November” and “How the Game Go,” plangent takes on overcoming adversity. On “Don’t Forget,” in between snippets of an old aggrieved Pimp C interview, Wave displays at least a brief glimmer of boast: “Rod crashed the ’Vette, but he came back in a better one/‘Rod fixed the ’Vette?’ Nah dog, this here the second one.”On paper, Tjay is working similar emotional territory. “I just rap about my pain ’cause I know others could relate,” he insists on “Slow Down.” And dating back to his earliest singles, like “Brothers,” Tjay has taken a microscope to the conditions that raised him. On “Nuf Said,” he nails a particular kind of intractable sadness relating a friend’s predicament: “Broski on the phone, he just want another chance to live/But he on his own so long in the cell, he say ‘the crib.’”Tjay’s voice is high-pitched — he’s one of a handful of current saccharine sing-rappers, including Lil Mosey — and his approach is melodic but not particularly soothing. His delivery can feel staccato, and so can his lyrics, which on songs like “Part of the Plan” tend toward the non sequitur, rhyming syllables tacked onto jumbled thoughts.On “Headshot,” the most recent single from this album, he follows his two guests, Polo G and Fivio Foreign, both of whom land harder than he does. In that way, it recalls “Mood Swings,” Tjay’s collaboration with Pop Smoke from last year, which was a hit on TikTok, largely as the soundtrack for comedic sketches about inappropriate older family members.They start with a starry-eyed kid sweetly lip syncing to Tjay about the object of their affection: “Shawty a little baddie, she my lil’ boo thang.” Then an older figure echoes them, lip syncing to Pop Smoke: “And shawty got the fatty.” The younger person agrees, lip syncing as Tjay concurs, “Shawty got the fatty,” before breaking character and staring at the flirtatious intruder, aghast.The interaction in these skits, and in the song, is almost primal — Pop Smoke, the gruff alpha, out to tame Tjay, and possibly walk off with his woman. It’s about power, but also authority. While those around him are staking hard claims to emotions and everything else, Tjay is still casting about, looking for a firm grip.Rod Wave“SoulFly”(Alamo)Lil Tjay“Destined 2 Win”(Columbia) More

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      The Telling of DMX’s Life Story

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      At the end of the 1990s, there was no rapper more popular than DMX, who rode a series of energized and earnest hits to the top of the Billboard album chart with each of his first five albums.The life he lived — from a childhood marked by abuse to an adulthood clouded by addiction — was robust, stormy and signature. He died on Friday at 50, after suffering what his family called “a catastrophic cardiac arrest” a week earlier.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the peaks and valleys of DMX’s career, the intense potency of his music and his religious fervor and what it was like to interview him.Guest:Smokey Fontaine, the co-author, with DMX, of the 2002 book “E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX”; a former music editor of The Source magazine; and the current editor in chief of the Apple App Store. More